


Six Centuries of Dreaming

by ZScalantian



Category: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X & Final Fantasy X-2
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Summons & Summoning Meta, Worldbuilding, cloister of trials (final fantasy x), fayth and aeons (final fantasy x)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:25:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23340115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZScalantian/pseuds/ZScalantian
Summary: Sin appeared like a leviathan, like the hand of judgement, at the end of the Machina Era, tipping Spira into a slow paced apocalypse.  The holy and legendary Yunalesca defeated it temporarily, but it took six hundred years before  another summoning of the Final Aeon... and in the next four centuries, there were four successful ones.  What explains the long gap?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: Worldbuilding Exchange 2020





	Six Centuries of Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveradept](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/gifts).



> A treat for silveradept for the Worldbuilding Exchange 2020. You had a prompt up for the workings of Yevon and the fayth, and guess what, I have a several hundred thousand word WIP that's all worldbuilding for the 1000 years between the Machina War and Yuna's pilgrimage and goes heavily into that! The following is a slice from the fourth section, which is concerned with the 600 year gap between the first Final Summoning and the second, and that aims to provide a backstory for the summoner Belgemine and the Magus Sisters aeon.
> 
> (The fic as a whole is actually a fusion AU with Square Enix's The World Ends With You game - some TWEWY characters, but all set firmly in Spira. For this specific excerpt, the only relevant knowledge is that this features the fayth from the Moonflow River, whose temple will be sunken and inaccessible by the time of FFX, and that the name Gatito is a TWEWY nod.)

“Sin’s barnacles, we are never going to get through here.” Dolga handed the sphere to the summoner, pulling a face like she was passing over a dead rat. 

Belgemine chuckled, a low and pleasant laugh. “You said the same thing at Macalania.” 

Her sister shrugged expressively at the starry ceiling above them, the thirteen pedestals scattered around the room, the thirteen dark hallways that branched off from this central chamber. “This place is even more of a puzzle.”

“But less slippery. Let us be grateful for small favors, Dolga.” The summoner tried a seventh pedestal, and as the sphere slid home, glyphs flashed and the star-lights flickered on in one of the hallways.

“Hmph,” answered Dolga. “I think you’d better do the puzzle-solving from here on. The place obviously likes you better.”

Belgemine laughed again, a little teasingly this time. “Until we reach the fayth itself, liking has nothing to do with it. It’s just that I’m cleverer than you.”

“Oh! You did not just say that.” Laughing, Dolga chased Belgemine down the corridor. More than halfway down its winding length, the summoner suddenly stopped, grabbing her pursuer before she plowed into her.

“Here.” The walls of the hallway were decorated with Yevon glyphs, but the symbol she stood in front of was not one of the syllabary. Superficially, it resembled the glyphs around it, painted in the same calligraphic style, but it was actually a stylized picture of a cat.

The summoner pressed her hand against it firmly, and the whole section of wall it was painted on shifted and ground aside. Behind it was a small dark room, the size of a broom closet, lit by a glowing sphere resting in a small niche in the back wall. The summoner, holding back her full sleeve with her left hand, reached into the little hollow and plucked it out. 

Behind her, the wall made an ominous noise. It began sliding back into place, and Belgemine darted back out of the little room. Around her, the walls revolved. Dolga stepped closer nervously. The walls quit moving, leaving a new corridor behind. Belgemine peered at the ceiling, where the constellations remained unmoved, a map for those with a good memory. 

Which her sailor sister had. Dolga stepped away, tugging at her sleeves to cover her nervousness. She looked around the hallway and pointed south. “We oughta try that way first. The hallway curves back toward the west.” They found their way back to the main chamber, and repeated the process with twelve more painted animals, spheres, and moving hallways. 

Dolga slid the last sphere into the groove in the thirteenth pedestal, and looked expectantly at the final hallway. Like the others, it lit up. Unlike the others, it went only a very short way, ending in a beautifully carved door. Belgemine stepped forward, passing her hands across it, looking for a way to open it. Her sister joined her, pulling at the sides and poking into the carved recesses.

After more than a quarter of an hour, they stepped back, defeated. Belgemine sighed and turned back to the large chamber. “We must have done something wrong.”

Her sister groaned, slumping against the wall and burying her face in her hands. “I can’t face anymore of this. Please, just leave me here to die and go on without me.”

Belgemine whipped around, nostrils flaring. “Don’t joke about that!”

Dolga dropped her hands and straightened, instantly penitent. “… Sorry, Begs. I forgot, for a second.”

The summoner stood with fists clenched, breathing through her nose. Slowly, she relaxed. She approached Dolga and placed her hand on her shoulder. “I will need you the whole way through, and Rega will need you after. One of us dying is more than enough.”

In a nearby room, observing through the blurring, shifting senses the pyreflies gave her, the temple’s fayth was astonished. She could feel that this summoner intended to face Sin. She believed in her own victory. And she absolutely believed that she would have to die to achieve it.

Suddenly, Gatito was impatient. This woman knew things, Gatito could feel it in her. Her certainty of victory was not based in blind confidence, but on some information she possessed. 

It had been more than six hundred years since Yunalesca’s legendary victory over Sin. The faithful though it was due to the saint-martyr’s inimitable holiness; the less religious thought the whole thing was a Yevon propaganda piece. No one really believed anymore that summoning was the key to Sin’s defeat, not even the fayth who’d given their lives toward that goal.

It was difficult to wait while the two women finally figured out that the thirteen pedestals had to be lined up in order of activation. It took all of Gatito’s considerable willpower to avoid giving them hints as they tried to remember which pedestal was which. _There are glyphs on the floor!_ she wanted to shout. _You did great looking up, now you’ve got to look down!_ When they figured it out at last, the carved doorway opened silently, sliding into the walls.

There was a small, round room beyond. At its far end was the low flight of stairs that led to the Chamber. The two women walked across the room, and the summoner began climbing the stairs. Her sister halted at the stair’s foot, and reached out to grab her arm, giving it a firm squeeze. 

“Good luck.”

Belgemine nodded solemnly. Dolga let go, and she turned and entered the Chamber. The door sealed shut behind her. She knelt before the statue, carefully arranging her skirts and setting her staff down on the ground with a soft _‘thunk’_. 

She bowed her head, but looked up again, startled, as Gatito manifested straight away. She took a breath, preparing to introduce herself, and Gatito caught her name in the thought. Gatito interrupted before she got a chance to say it aloud.

_How do you plan to defeat Sin?_

Belgemine was taken aback. Probably the other fayth had been a little more decorous. Too bad. Gatito couldn’t keep her curiosity in check any longer.

“Ah...” The summoner shook her head and collected herself. “I found a sphere of a speech Lady Yunalesca gave about defeating Sin.” The image flashed in her mind - the slim, bright summoner, the two men standing at her side, the temple arches behind them. With a jolt, Gatito recognized the scene. Yunalesca’s press conference in Bevelle. What had she said, exactly…? Gatito didn’t remember it clearly. The feelings and the images had stuck through the ages more strongly than the exact words.  
  
“I was helping my mentor with his research in Bevelle’s archives when I found it,” the summoner explained. “Lady Yunalesca said there was another fayth in Zanarkand, one that was strong enough to fight Sin. After a long hunt, I found a recording of her final battle.”

The picture in her mind this time was the green and gold dragon-ish aeon Yunalesca had summoned in the fractured ruins, the aeon that had destroyed Sin. _The aeon should still be there…!_ Gatito thought with wonder and delight.

In six hundred years of fighting off Sin, Gatito and the others had never killed it. Damaged it, yes, often. Driven it away from their homes, usually, though not usually enough. (The cracked bridges beyond her temple, the fiends that slunk through the city’s abandoned streets, were proof of that.) But this aeon had a winning record. 

Maybe they’d only won because Yunalesca had been their summoner. Maybe their statue had broken after six hundred years, or they’d lost themself during their long isolation. Even with those risks, Gatito felt more hopeful than she had in centuries.

_Summoner Belgemine,_ she said. _I give gladly to you my aeon. The future you imagine is the same one I wish for. Let us pursue it together._

The summoner bent low, pressing her forehead to the dome of glass. “I am honored. I only hope I will prove worthy of your boon.” 

A blue light arose. She was...

_She was Belgemine, born of Kilika Island, a daughter of jungle and sea. At age four, she built lumpy castles on the black sand beach. Age six, and she could hardly breathe, for joy, for fear she’d wake the tiny red-faced sister asleep in her arms. Nine years old, she tried to stifle her laughter at the faces her best friend made whenever the nun’s back was turned. Ten years old, and her best friend’s family took her in after Sin scoured away the black sand beach and her parents. At age thirteen, she rocked another little sister to sleep, praying they would all stay safe. Age fifteen, she ran her hands with joy over the surplice she’d earned, the fabric fine and stiff against her brush-calloused fingers. Seventeen years, and she took her summoner’s staff with less joy and more trepidation, hearing the fiery murmur of Ifrit in her skull._

__

__

_Twenty years old, she wept as she waved until the dock was out of sight, no matter that their father was making the initial journey to Bevelle with her. Twenty-four, she read with shock of their father’s ship going down with all hands. Twenty-seven, she returned home in time to perform the sending for their mother, the water churning under her dancing feet. Twenty-nine, she found the purpose for her life in a dusty shelf of ancient spheres, hearing words no one had heard for centuries._

//////////////////////////

Belgemine woke still bent upon the floor, with her muscles cold and stiff. Her vision strobed, and she pressed the back of one hand to her aching head. “Ahhhh,” she sighed. The fourth time was no easier than the others. As a girl, she’d feared dying in the Trials, and she was glad she had not tried for Ifrit back then. The pain and exhaustion after acceptance were a message that this was not for the unprepared.

She used her staff to pull herself back upright, feeling for the new aeon inside her. ‘Gatito’ was the name of the temple on the maps, but the dream inside her didn’t seem to suit that name. “Are you there?” she asked.

_Always._

“Do you mind other names?”

_I’ve had a few. I don’t mind._

A weary smile crossed her face. “I have a fondness for flower names. I feel that… Kusuma… would match well.”

The flower she pictured was tall and spiky, but glimmered with garlands of golden florets. _It’s lovely,_ replied Kusuma. 

Belgemine and Dolga stayed the night in Gatito’s temple, then shared the temple clergy’s breakfast before setting off. Yesterday, she’d met the three summoners based here, but they weren’t sitting in the benchrows of nuns and monks this morning. 

Perhaps they were jealous of her. Maybe they were ashamed. In the old spheres Belgemine studied, summoners fought against Sin and its spawn, driving them away from the cities. They used to go on pilgrimages, building up the strength of their soul by praying to every fayth in Spira, the inspiration for her current trip. 

These days, most summoners were in-name-only. They worked as temple mages, studied and preached the holy writ, passed on the traditions. They Sent the dead, too. The magic that called pyreflies into a glyph was similar to the magic that soothed and sent away the souls of the dead, so over time, the duty had come to be theirs, instead of the traditional Senders.

They didn’t pray to the fayth, anymore. The risks were too high. Fiend-fighting was a lot more dangerous than in the past, with six centuries worth of restless dead transformed to monsters. No one wanted to be called to face off against fiends alone, supernaturally aided by an aeon or not.

There was a danger, too, of dying during the Trials. A summoner could complete the soul-tuning puzzles in a Cloister and still be rejected by the fayth inside, and sometimes that backlash was so total that it killed the summoner. Even a non-fatal rejection could kill indirectly - Belgemine had known an apprentice summoner in Kilika who’d thrown himself off a cliff after Ifrit refused him, rather than live with the shame of being unworthy.

Belgemine squinted, looking along the rows of nuns and monks, hoping, but for whatever reason, the summoners of the Moonflow Temple were not at breakfast with her. She’d wanted to talk to someone about the aftereffects of receiving an aeon, and see what they’d noticed about the process.

Black/white rainbows still flickered in the corners of Belgemine’s eyes. She tried to will them away, but they persisted all the way to the river ferry. They vanished as her foot left Kusuma’s island, leaving her sighing with relief. Every aeon had its own toll, at least at first.

When she’d gone back to Kilika for her mother’s last days, after the Sending, Begs had climbed the mountain to Ifrit’s temple and prayed as she’d always had the right to, but never the courage. And when the fayth came to her, leaving behind his aeon, she’d smelled smoke for days. In Bevelle, Bahamut left bells ringing in her ears and nights didn’t seem so dark. At frozen Macalania Temple, the tips of her fingers and toes tingled for a day and a half after blue Shiva’s dream settled inside her. 

No one had studied summoning seriously in a long time - how it worked, how best to teach it, how to grow it as a skill. Like everything in Spira, it had sunk into a heavy web of tradition and ritual, things done in a specific way because that was how it was done. Enough was known about summoning to teach and pass it on, and that was good enough. 

The effects from Kusuma had passed in less than a day. Was it that, after you had one aeon, the others were easier to adjust to? Her mind turned the thought over and over as the river flowed past. Two hundred years ago, the teachings held that pilgrimage strengthened both the summoner and the aeons inside them. Was that so? By what mechanism -

Dolga knocked an elbow into her side, cutting off her musings.

“Ready to go?”

Belgemine blinked and looked around - they’d reached the riverbank. She stood, tucking the thought aside for later. 


End file.
